Decisions, part four

Chris? The voice was soft, just at the edge of his thoughts. We found them.

Where? He shifted his weight, thought the better of leaping to the next building, and waited. 

The image formed slowly, but he recognized the location. I should have guessed. He paused, then added, On my way. It was the large central building in the training complex; the exercise's designated bad guys had set up in a corner room on the fifth floor, which gave them a view over most of the rest of the rooftops. If Chris hadn't been wrapped in Look-Away and Nothing-To-See-Here magics, they would doubtless have spotted him already. And even with those in place, it would be better to circle around than approach directly. 

He found Antoinette on a rooftop looking up into one of the windows; by scent, because she was wrapped in her own set of obfuscations. He stopped beside her, deliberately putting his foot down to make the graveled surface of the rooftop crunch quietly. 

"You're here." She sounded relieved, even as she kept her voice a soft, breath whisper. "Could you make it across?"

"Elyssa?"

"I got her inside, past their wards. If you crash in through the window, she'll come through the door. I have enough Grey left to take myself across, but only barely -- I'll try to distract them while you take them down."

Chris nodded slowly, though Antoinette likely wouldn't be able to see it. "Here," he said, then breathed out the word for Connection as he reached for her hand. 

His hand found the small of her back instead, and he shared some of the Grey that he had stored for himself. He hadn't transformed yet, and was still fresh from his last exposure; he could spare it. Antoinette stiffened, surprised and momentarily uncomfortable, but she accepted the connection and magic it offered. "How...?" Then he felt her step aside, and let his hand fall. "We go on your mark," she said. "Elyssa and I come in behind you."

"How many?" he asked. 

"Two," Antoinette told him. "But it's Sherri and Thorin." 

"Shit." He hadn't seen either of them since shortly after their first adventure into the Grey and their encounter with the bonetaker. Thorin was a cat, and fast; Sherri was one of the more formidable magi he had met. If he came through first, he'd need to take at least one of them out, even if it was only temporary; ideally, he needed to shut them both down long enough for help to arrive. "Could be worse," he said after a moment. "It could have been Peter and Morri." He paused. "Tell Elyssa I'm about to go."

He took five steps back, crouched, and then hurled himself forward and launched himself into the air. His foot, half-transformed, caught the edge of the low stone wall that surrounded the rooftop, and he pushed himself up and out, through empty air, aiming directly for the no-doubt-warded windows behind which the opposing magus and her RO were waiting.

Passage of Faith: part one

Redrick Gleamalong hurried through the woods, hoping that he wasn't being followed. He'd covered his tracks as best he could, but there was only so much he could do. Xandria, protect your servant. Preserve me to do your good work. Keep me safe from your enemies. 

There: a break in trees ahead. His steps slowed for a moment, then he picked up his pace again. The squirrel chittered from its place in the thrown-back hood of his cloak: Stop? Sleep? Chase around later?

He chittered back: I know. We're almost there, I hope. 

Acorn huffed, then wriggled out of the hood and climbed onto his shoulder. Hide in a tree, it suggested.

They climb, Redrick answered, and Acorn shivered at the prospect of arboreal predators. The squirrel stayed quiet, looking around warily as Redrick emerged from the break and started out into the knee-high grasses. He touched the hidden slit in his belt one more time, making sure the talisman was still in its place. 

Then he raised his eyes, squinting against the sudden sun, and took a long look around. There was a graveled road ahead of him, blessedly empty of traffic, leading from the outskirts of a town to the heavy wooden ramp that led up to the airdock. And there, tied off to the tower, was an airship. 

Salvation. He drew a deep breath. Thank you, blessed Xandria. 

He started for the ramp.

Music: I was looking for a particular piece...

...and remarkably, I didn't find it on YouTube. I can't decide if that's a good thing or bad. I wanted Lu Mitchell's This Too Shall Pass. Instead, I'm going to throw out the next thing that came to my mind -- randomly, with no association. The band is Cryoshell, known primarily for providing some tracks for the soundtracks of Lego's Bionicle animated movies, but honestly? They did rock. 

Decisions, part three

Going from building to building was harder than Chris expected. The cats could do it, of course; even in human form they could leap incredible distances, move without any sound of footfalls, and land undamaged on their feet after falls that should have broken bones. Antoinette had apparently anticipated him on that; the words she'd laid on him didn't just hide him from sight, they also muffled the sounds he made. Even so, he was glad that the buildings in the training quad were solid.

He was vaguely aware of Antoinette and Elyssa moving away below him; a moment later he lost them completely. He made a short jump across to another building and paused there. It helped that there was nobody else in the training quad; any sounds or movements would only come from their targets. As long as he managed to stay unseen and un-heard, the only thing that could give him away was...

Magic. Chris paused on the low wall at the edge of another room, catching his balance so that he didn't step down and come into contact with it. Somebody was worried about people coming at them from above. It was a simple ward, an alarm, but not something that he -- as a wolf -- should be able to bypass. No, he'd need Antoinette for that. Except...

He lowered himself and then hung over the side of the wall, eased down to the top row of windows. The structure was only three stories high, but he took his time; a fall at this point would be more than just inconvenient, if it gave him away. Nothing. He moved down another level. There. The windows for a corner room were warded as well, but...

He sprang across the width of the alley to the opposite wall, caught his fingertips on a brick ledge, and hauled himself up until he could see inside. The windows were warded, but not covered; he could see a mostly-empty room, with two figures inside. The doll that was taking the place of the hypothetical child hostage might be in there, but if so it wasn't anywhere obvious. 

His fingertips were getting tired from hanging here. Chris pulled himself up to the top of the building and circled around the warded one, finding his own way. He was due to meet his partners at the far side of the quad, and needed to check as many buildings as he could manage on the way.

Decisions, part two

"Okay," said Antoinette, standing in the shadow of one of the training buildings. "I'm open to suggestions."

Elyssa touched the amulet that hung between her collar bones, but Chris looked at her and shook his head. "Not here. How well can you climb?"

Elyssa frowned. "Pretty well if you're just asking about climbing, but if you want some kind of parkour... Can you do that?"

Chris considered. "Well enough, I think." 

Antoinette nodded. "I saw you go through those bones. You're not one of the cats, but you can move when you want to."

"I need you to cloak me with look-aways and nothing-to-see charms," Chris said. "I'll make a quick circuit and see what the scents tell me, then catch back up. If you two come in carefully you shouldn't be seen, and you can do your own looking. at ground level. Can you locate magics without triggering them? Like, find where wards are without setting them off?"

"Usually," Antoinette said. "Depends on the wards, of course."

Chris nodded at that. The clock was ticking; they needed to be moving. They also needed to balance that with being careful. "All right. Meet at the far corner in fifteen?"

Antoinette nodded. Then she spoke and gestured, and Chris felt a layer of Grey settle over him. He nodded and turned away, eyeing one of the buildings, then started up the side of it. 

It brought back memories that he didn't want, and for a moment he almost faltered. He knew how to climb fast because one of his friends growing up had been half-outsider and able to climb walls like a spider; racing her up a wall required concentration, precision, and complete commitment. He still lost, of course, but--

No. That was in the past. He held his focus and kept going, until he came out on the rooftop.

Back to Work

Okay, I'm officially back to work. Today is likely to be a slow day, except that we have a project this evening that will involve moving a bunch of workflows over from a training environment and getting them going in actual production; Firstborn seems to be well-settled in his new environment; and Secondborn should be ready to go out the door pretty much any minute now. 

I'm starting to get my breath back, but I've mostly been using my creative energies to get some D&D sessions ready to go. So for today... Oh, I haven't listened to this in a while: 

Annnnnd a day off

All right, yesterday was Collapse And Recuperate Day. Today, Beautiful Wife is back to teaching and I have dropped Secondborn, who A) usually rides his bicycle and B) usually doesn't oversleep, off at school. On time, yet. Go, team! 

...I need to set an alarm so I remember to go pick him up. 

I've also remembered the thing that I was going to order for Firstborn, so I'm going to go do that now. After that, I get a cup of tea and start on cleaning the kitchen, beginning with laundry and dishes and followed by... well, more laundry and more dishes, probably. 

Holy shit, we did it, y'all. 

I hope you all go out and have a really excellent day.

Update #2

Hit a point about 4:30 this afternoon where I was just like, "Did we really go all the way up there and get the boy all set up and then come all the way back?" Not, like, denial exactly. It just feels so surreal. 

And, of course, we have cell phones. We can text him. He can text us. In a real pinch, there might even be phonecalls. It's really not at all like it was when I went away to college, and I have to say this is giving me some interesting perspectives on that experience. \

I'm still off work tomorrow, and hopefully I'll be decompressed enough to start with some cleaning; the house isn't desperate yet, but it could sure use some attention. Secondborn stayed with his Nana and biked back and forth to school (pretty much the same way he would have if we'd all been home), and apparently the dog kept coming in to check on him while he was asleep; I am so, so proud of him. He and the dog are both back over here, and I'm trying to figure out how early I can go to bed and still reasonably expect to sleep through the night.

Update to Long Day

 I don't know whether or not this counts as "processing" but I am profoundly exhausted.

Another Long Day

Okay, this one's going up unedited because there's a decent chance that I won't even be awake yet when it posts. Basically: better day, a lot fewer issues, but still very, very long. 

As planned, we popped up and grabbed breakfast at the hotel, then drove over to Firstborn's new dorm, where we were greeted by a pack of upperclassmen who grabbed his stuff out of our vehicles and got it all up to his room. We then managed to get our vehicles removed to an outer parking lot, so other parents could do the same. 

Then we set about trying to get the room into shape, which meant opening all the boxes, sorting out items... and realizing that there were really only three full-sized drawers and one desk drawer in the entire room (not counting the, um, shelf? at the top of the closets). Firstborn's room is built to be a (pretty tight) double and he's occupying it as a single, so it had a good amount of room, but the furnishings were a dresser with three drawers, a desk, and a side-table with another drawer and a storage space underneath -- all three set up as a single desktop underneath the loft bed. (The loft bed looked rickety as hell, but I think it'll hold; it also completely lacked any sort of steps or ladder.) So, we did some creative arranging and Beautiful Wife -- an absolute life-saver -- started making a list of other things that we needed to purchase for his room, starting with shelves and some kind of low cabinet that could hold the microwave. 

By the time we got all that sorted out, it was time to go meet Beautiful Wife's aunt, whom I'll call T, for lunch. You may wonder why we would interrupt the dorm-room setup to go do this when we had only one day to finish; I know I did. As it happens, T is an absolute treasure: delighted to see us, absolutely thrilled to meet Firstborn as a near-adult instead of a kindergartener, and well-connected with the local community. She had some ideas about how to get the medical staples out of the back of Firstborn's head, and was more than willing to accompany him whenever this happened. Plus, the food was really good. 

After that, we headed over to the local Target, which was absolutely swarming with incoming freshmen and their hollow-eyed parents. We went down Beautiful Wife's list, and I found a low cabinet which would fill in the space beside the refrigerator and a matching set of shelves, both of which were intended for garage/workroom/tool storage deployment, so they had sort of a cool warehouse aesthetic, were cheaper than the things intended for room furnishings, and also were much easier to assemble. Beautiful Wife managed, through what I can only consider a effort of pure will, to find a small and completely suitable card table, plus a couple of rugs and some cushions to complete her vision for the room. (I will note for the record here that I did not have a vision for the room; I just wanted to add places to put shit.) We checked out, taking advantage of a New Student Discount that Beautiful Wife knew about (and in the process endeared ourselves to the mother/daughter pair in front of us, who recognized Firstborn because they'd done the tour together and were thrilled to have a 20% discount to justify some extra purchases) then drove back to the campus. 

By then, though, it was time for the Convocation, which... I am bad at describing rituals and ceremonies. They don't do much for me, and I find them tedious. Beautiful Wife, however, tells me that she found it an emotional experience, and that it gave her kind of closure -- like, we were really here, this was really done, Firstborn was really getting started here. So this isn't a knock on the school or the Convocation, it's just One Of Those Me-Things. I will note that the invocation at the end was aggressively non-denominational and as generically religious as anything I've ever seen (while still being effective), enough so that ending it with the much-more culturally specific "Amen" was actually jarring for me. So really, well done on that whole thing.

In theory, after this, we were supposed to make our goodbyes and leave, but... yeah. Furniture. Still in the van, yet. 

So we brought the new purchases up to his room, and I assembled the shelves while Firstborn assembled the cabinet and Beautiful Wife unwrapped and arranged the rest of it. The three-step step-stool (which Firstborn described as a step-step-step-stool) allowed us to pull the broken-down boxes from the back of one of the closets and store them in the luggage space above the closets; it was later positioned to help him get up to his bed. Once we were finished -- amidst a certain amount of fuss over exactly how to arrange everything for the Optimal Dorm Room Experience(tm) -- we had about twenty minutes left before Firstborn was due for an orientation/socializing dinner, and it was definitely time to go. The furniture was arranged, there was at least one poster on the wall, and the room was comfortably his. The microwave fit perfectly atop the cabinet -- I'm still proud of finding something with exactly the measurements we needed to fit it into its little nook beside the refrigerator -- and the work- and play-spaces were arranged to his liking. So we said our goodbyes, Beautiful Wife got some pictures, and I grabbed the Giant Box Of Trash and carried it down to the dumpster. 

I could make some noises about how this was all such a Profound Emotional Experience, but if we're being honest I was too busy doing it to have much in the way of feelings about it. As I may have mentioned earlier, I'll probably do my actual emotional processing in a couple of days, so it's probably a good thing that I don't have to be back at work until Friday. (New Job takes a while to build up vacation time, but they also hand you a week of it the moment you start so as to cover situations exactly like this, because they're not idiots.) 

Then we turned around and drove all the way back home, because as much as it might have been easier to stop halfway and find a place to stay the night, I really wanted to just put a pin in this whole exercise and mark it as Done. 

So... Good day? I think so. Long day? Definitely. Emotional day? Yeah? Kind of? But also definitely, in some areas? I think we left Firstborn in a room that he can be comfortable in and has kind of marked as his own (which is a lot more important and a lot less superficial than it might sound). I think he was feeling a lot better after assembling the cabinet almost completely on his own, too. I know for a goddamned fact that we weren't the only parents in that particular emotional space, because we could see them all around us and also because we were far from the last to leave. 

This was the kind of quest where I really feel like after all that I should be able to level up, but of course I have to take a Long Rest in order for that to happen. So, on that happy note, good night! I hope you're all already sleeping well by now. You'll see this in the morning, or later, and I may even still be asleep when you do. 

Ye Gods, I love my wife.

Long Day

It's a long way to Arkansas with all the powers of the cosmos conspiring against you. 

What with one thing and another, we didn't manage to get going until nearly three-thirty in the afternoon, so by the time we got settled in to our hotel room it was 10:30 at night. Admittedly, that actually could have been worse, but... the doctor at the Minute clinic said that the staples in the back of Firstborn's head weren't ready to come out, and suggested that we wait until at least Friday; that was the start of the day. We'd intended to leave much earlier than we did, so our departure was marked by a frenzy of last-minute packing and making sure people had their meds with them... and then, of course we hit traffic, though in fairness we might have hit that if we'd left earlier, too. And the hotel parking lot is overrun with construction vehicles from a nearby project, so I'm actually parked at another hotel next door. 

The nice thing about having a plan is that when it all goes to shit you know exactly what you aren't doing.

Tomorrow morning we pop up, grab breakfast, and get Firstborn moved into his dorm room; we also need to talk to somebody about getting his staples removed. There are some Welcome New Students events, and then we're done -- around four-thirty or five, as I understand it. Not sure yet if we'll drive a bit and then stop for the night, or if I'll drive us all the way back in a fit of Let's Just Get This Over With; we'll see how we're feeling.

My new job, at least, hasn't given me even a hint of trouble about any of this. And I remembered to set my out of office and mark myself as on vacation on the staff board, so that was good. We stopped and had an early dinner at The Cracker Barrel, which was fun; I finally remembered how to solve the little peg-board puzzle. And we all made it intact, which I suppose is really the important part. But Lordy are we all tired. I'm going to have a drink and go to bed; a shower would do me good, but I'm not sure I'm up to it. 

Y'all won't see this until tomorrow morning, but goodnight anyway; I hope you were all sleeping soundly while I was typing it.

And so it begins...

Today we depart to take Firstborn to his college. There will be excitement. There will be adventure. There will be Really Wild Things. May the ever-watchful gods of Major Life Changes see us through.

Friday!

Yeah, no, not even going to try for anything that involves thought, writing, or effort on my part. Instead I'll just keep going with the Weekday-Related Music theme that I seem to have in place this week: 

Thursday?!?!?

So yeah, this week has been fraught. In addition to all the events and transitions I mentioned back on Monday, we had an emergency room visit Monday night. (Firstborn managed to hit the back of his head on a parking lot, and wound up with a mild concussion and some staples; fortunately, it turned out not to be anything more serious than that.) Which means that instead of sensibly heading home from D&D at 10:30, I wound up heading home from the ER at something like 2:00 a.m. 

Which was fine, and absolutely did not disrupt my sleep schedule even further or leave trying to slog through my work day on three hours of sleep and some extremely caffeinated tea. 

I am terrified by the prospect of facing off with Next Week. 

Wednesday Challenge: Talk more, people!

(This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge. You can find links to other writers' answers over at Long and Short Reviews. I have not been following along as reliably this year as I did in previous years, but I'm still participating! Mostly.)

Prompt: Things I wish more people talked about openly

I mean... I mean... Swords. Dungeons and Dragons. Obscure boardgames. Horror movies. Any of my hobbies, really. Axolotls. 

But also, if we're being more serious, I also wish more people would talk about basic medical stuff. The sheer number of men I've known who apparently go their whole lives without really understanding how menstruation works, the sheer number of people I've known who apparently survive without having any idea how nutrition works, the sheer number of people who apparently don't realize how many medical and adjacent concepts (BMI, IQ, your brain not being fully developed until age 25) are actually just bullshit...

On a related note, Wikipedia's list of common misconceptions is an absolutely fascinating read, and there are plenty of things on there that I'd love to hear people discussing more often. 

And since I'm apparently posting a song for each day of the week, here's one for Wednesday:

Tuesday???

Honestly, the sheer gall of it being Tuesday like this. How is this even a thing? 

Oh, well. I lack so much as a pair of brain cells to rub together, so have some music:

Monday? Monday. Monday!

Okay, so it's Monday. To recap: 

• Secondborn starts school tomorrow; today is his orientation. Between my change in jobs and his mother cramming two semesters worth of classes into this semester, he'll be bicycling back and forth most of the time.
  
• Firstborn gets dropped off at college next Tuesday; Secondborn will be staying with his grandmother while we're out of town with Firstborn. Meanwhile, we're... trying to get Firstborn to finish packing, and he's busy freaking out instead.
• Beautiful Wife's classes also start next week. Oh, and her job continues to be a maze of treacherous fuckery, so as difficult as this will be I think she's absolutely right to double up this semester so she can look at other options (while still getting paid) next semester.
  
• Our friends are finishing their packing and heading up to Boston this week, so tonight will be the last fully in-person D&D session. This is not the end of the game, but it really does feel like the end of an era.
  
• My sleep schedule is an unholy mess, which should be easy enough to fix if everything will just settle down.
  

So yeah, I think we're all a little bit unhinged at this point. I'm hoping once the week gets moving we'll find a rhythm, but for now I think we just keep putting one foot in front of the other and moving forward as best we can. The new job, at least, is going well -- a few minor technical challenges and some things I haven't done before, but no unreasonable demands or outrages upon my time. This is the beginning of week five, and it will officially be one full month on Thursday.

Music: Ribbons

Sisters of Mercy:

Okay, yes, wow

You know, I don't think it would have been unreasonable to hope that I could change jobs and just focus on settling in to my new role. I mean, yeah, I have a lot of baggage to shake off from the old job -- obviously -- but a couple of dips in the sleep schedule and some weird dreams and I think I could have gotten over that. 

But based on Tuesday night's Weird Fucking Dreams (which woke me up about half an hour early on Wednesday) and this inexplicable sense of overall stress that I'm carrying, apparently that's not enough. I mentioned in earlier posts that of the two couple-friends who have enriched our social life for the last half-decade, one couple is in the process of trying to sell their house so they can move to Colorado, and the other is moving all their stuff up to Boston next fucking week. Plus school starts for Secondborn next week -- we aren't ready -- and we're dropping Firstborn off at college the week after that -- we really aren't ready. Finally, Beautiful Wife's job is being an absolute shit-show right now -- they seem to be trying to sideline her department, if not remove it entirely -- so she's freaking out because she needs to prepare for a double-load of classes¹ in the fall semester, which also starts Really Soon Now.

I'd like to have a nervous breakdown, please. At least, I'd like to drop everything else and get this stuff sorted out. Instead, I have to keep showing up for work, continue actually working so I can keep this job, and figure out some way to squeeze in the other stuff -- like helping Secondborn figure out ways to get himself back and forth from school, and Firstborn get registered for classes -- around the edges. 

Plus I'm watching a lot of the things that I've spent the last several years relying on to keep me sane -- Monday night D&D, Wednesday night horror webcast, Friday Night Writes -- come apart in real time, and apparently my brain has decided to just seize up and start screaming "NOTHING WILL EVER BE THE SAME AGAIN!!!" at me. Which, yes, thank you, I knew that, Brain. 

I'm so tired. 

I would like one year -- just one -- out of the 2020s to just... be a normal year. Just... have a routine, be manageable, don't be buried under an avalanche of external stressors like Covid (Hi, yes, we've hit the summer flare-up and nobody's acting like it because we've been betrayed and abandoned by our public health organizations), the election (which I'm actually finally hopeful about but if anything goes wrong we're now a fully fascist state), and multiple Major Life Changes all happening at once.

Breathe. Move forward. Don't panic. That's my mantra right now. 

I have a meeting this morning and several projects to follow up on. I know what I need to do next. 

But dear gods I would like to crawl into a hole and hide for a while.

1. The idea is that she does her entire year's worth of classes right now, leaving her free in the spring to look for another job, a suitable side-hustle, or a better way to navigate the current bullshit.

Challenge: Advice

(This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge. You can find links to other writers' answers over at Long and Short Reviews. I have not been following along as reliably this year as I did in previous years, but I'm still participating! Mostly.)

Prompt: Funniest advice I've received

"Okay. Go downhill, really fast. If something gets in your way, turn.” It's a (slightly misquoted) line from the movie Better Off Dead, and Beautiful Wife and I use it as a shorthand for when one of us is vacillating about whether or not to attempt something, and the other one thinks we should go for it. 

Because sometimes you just need to throw yourself down the Instant Death ski slope with only one ski on and win that race.

Music: Gutter Glitter

Blast from the past courtesy of Switchblade Symphony: 

Weird Dreams

There's a meme going around somewhere that asks, "Are you Self-Sufficient as in Self-Sufficient? Or are you Self Sufficient as in I Am Carrying The Weight Of Years Of Other People Expecting Me To Get Things Done Without Adequate Explanation, Resources, Or Support?" and boy howdy, that one hit me pretty hard. 

I have trouble knowing when I need to ask for help, partly because I think Previous Job spent nearly two decades training me to expect that no matter how reasonable the ask, management was never going to direct additional resources my way. Not if they cost money. Maybe I could get my co-workers to help out -- they were actually very good about that, but a lot of them were in the same position I was, resource-wise.

(It's also apparently a pretty common thing with ADHD/Spectrum folks, but leave that aside for the moment. I know that not knowing when to asked for help is an issue for me, and I've watched Firstborn struggle with the same issue. Which is why I believe it's vitally important for both of us to avoid being in situations like that, where our response is just to take more and more of it onto ourselves until we burn out completely.) 

Anyway based on a weird spot of insomnia Saturday night and the even-weirder dreams that hit when I finally crashed on Sunday afternoon, I'm pretty sure that my brain's having trouble processing that, particularly in relation to the New Job. To be clear: the New Job has been very reasonable in its expectations (especially as I'm still getting the lay of the land), substantially more relaxed, and it looks like for the first time in my life they're actually willing to throw money at things that would make my job easier and more efficient. 

And apparently I have no goddamned idea how to process that. 

But yeah, I think part of the reason I couldn't sleep Saturday night is because my brain was just saving up for this huge processing trauma-dump session which it promptly dreamed me through on Sunday. (I'm actually writing this Sunday evening, so hopefully my actual night's sleep will be less fraught.) About fourteen straight hours of playing Baldur's Gate 3 probably helped too. 

So yeah, that was my weekend. How was yours?

(Monday morning update: Ohhhhhh, yeah, more weird dreams last night and this morning, very definitely work/stress related. Woke up feeling a lot more relaxed afterward, though. It'd be nice to change jobs without my subconscious having to stop and process a shitload of deep-seated emotional trauma, but I forget that, well, that's just not how people work. At least, it sure as hell isn't the way I work. And shaking off all that accumulated stress and burnout feels like trying to hatch, like trying to force my way out through an existential egg-shell from the inside... or smash my way out of a cage.)

(And the way the calendar looks, I'll get this more or less settled just in time to have to turn around and process the whole thing with Firstborn going off to college. I can't even imagine...)

(August's going to be interesting.)

Vinnie: Watching the Reunion

Vinnie floated quietly at the edge of the tunnel as Amergin and Archibald turned to embrace their two wayward siblings with shouting and laughter. 

He was... was he sad? This wasn't anger, and it wasn't the greasy satisfaction he'd felt at having tricked them into letting him do something truly horrible. Yeah, sure. Sadness. Me. That'll be the day. But it was... good. Good to see them back together, even if the rogue was still missing. Even if he could only watch this reunion from the outside, it felt right. For this one moment, after centuries of solitary study, Vinnie wished he could have that sort of companionship, that unmistakable sense of belonging. 

He'd never realized that he missed it.

He didn't begrudge Whisper or James for taking the opportunity to leave; he'd pranked them pretty badly. Lithos, though... Lithos' unexpected flight had hurt him. It felt like a betrayal, and it didn't matter at all that Vinnie knew he'd betrayed the goblin first. The kid was supposed to stick with him. That was how he'd set it all up: they'd hate him, but they'd rely on him because they had to. They'd keep him around.

Yeah, but that was just for fun. Just to prove I could do it, make these would-be Good Guys help me, even knowing what I did to them, even knowing that I was looking for powerful souls to eat and that I absolutely will eat them. It wasn't supposed to affect him; he wasn't supposed to get attached to them. 

And I ain't. I'm just usin' them to keep me out of sight. Which meant he couldn't blast Lithos on the spot; he didn't care if the kid had left, or if he came back. Nope, not at all. He'd just sit here, feeling all satisfied that his plan was working. 

It still felt like sadness.

Terror Povos: An Unexpected Arrival

The wagons were rolling slowly along, drawn through the deep roads by the under-oxen. Lithos had read that the under-oxen were not so different from those found overhill, just better adapted to heat and damp and able to see in the dark. They were slower than horses, but far stronger and more reliable. 

Lithos himself was stretched out on the roof of Schist Splitvein's wagon, near the front of the caravan, half-dozing and wondering just what the hell had happened for him to end up here. It wasn't like he didn't remember, it was just that the whole thing seemed unreal... 

Oh shit, he thought. Vinnie. Vinnie must have cast Wish, that nearly-ultimate magic. He must have erased the events in the prison, rearranged things so that all those deaths had never happened. Except the Warden. He would have kept the warden's soul. Even so, it meant that the demilich had made good on his side of the deal. It meant that Lithos owed him. 

Shit. Fuck. Damn it. He considered rolling over and just going back to sleep, but...

You can't ignore a debt, his mother's voice said firmly. You have to do the right thing by others, and hope that they do right by you. Was skipping out on Vinnie the right thing? Or did doing the right thing mean going back and paying his debt by helping Vinnie take those souls like he'd agreed to do? He was two cycles out now, and traveling with traders. It could take twice that to get back to where they'd parted, and longer to track down where the demilich had taken his brothers. 

And then he'd have to deal with Vinnie, who'd sent a ghoul to try to kill him. If Vinnie blasted him on the spot... Then I guess my problems are over. He could risk that. He could risk it in order to pay his debt and then try to make things right. Even if making things right ultimately meant going up against Vinnie, which was spider-fucking suicide. 

T'would be an honorable death, said his father's voice in his head. Far better than fleein' tae the goblin tribes and tryin' tae find a place there. 

Lithos? called a soft voice, cutting into his half-dozing considerations. 

He rolled over, trying to tangle himself further in his blankets. His siblings, in their good-hearted way,  made fun of him for it; but he found it comforting. Only this time, it didn't work; the blankets caught on something, refused to turn with him. 

"Lithos?" asked the voice again, and this time he realized he was hearing it. 

He jerked fully awake, twisting out of the blankets like an escape artist, and brought a hand up. 

James caught it. "Brother," he said. 

The air fled Lithos' lungs. He drew it back in with a terrible effort, then asked: "What are you doing here?"

"Whisper sent me back," said James. "Said it wasn't safe, after we finished off the ghoul. He said if you'd run you'd have gone this way, and then here you were on the caravan."

"Whisper," said Lithos. Then: "Is he here?"

James shook his head. "Gone. Really gone." She looked stricken. "Like, he-said-we-wouldn't-see-him-again gone."

Lithos considered that for a long, long time. "He was always going to leave us someday, wasn't he?" 

"I hoped not," James admitted. "But yeah, he was." 

"Did he want you to go into hiding with me?" Lithos asked. "Because I've been thinking I should go back to Amergin and Archibald... and Vinnie."

"He just said I should stay with you," said James. "But that's Whisper. He worries over us, but he's always been happiest taking care of himself. I think we should go back."

"Then we'll do it, Brother," Lithos said quietly. He reached for the blanket and began folding it over so he could roll it up. "You have no idea what a relief this is."

Yeah, Vinnie might kill them. But Lithos didn't think so. He didn't pretend to understand what a centuries-old demilich might want or how he might think, but the patterns were there. Vinnie hadn't killed them when they'd first pulled him out of the pile of skulls. He could have, but he didn't. He'd traveled with them, and he hadn't killed any of them then, either. He'd gotten them imprisoned, but he'd neither abandoned them nor destroyed them. Vinnie might not care about them, exactly, but he'd... taken a liking to them. Maybe only the kind of liking that a child has for an interesting toy, but... maybe not? Lithos wasn't sure.

It's worth the risk, he decided.